


Sixteen, Seventeen

by Nillegible



Series: Shikadai/Boruto works [1]
Category: Boruto: Naruto Next Generations
Genre: Because he has good taste, Clouds, Fluff, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, My Mitsuki ships ShikaBoru, Only one-sided Kagura/Shikadai, Temporary Character Death
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-09-02
Updated: 2018-09-02
Packaged: 2019-07-05 22:17:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,205
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15872820
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nillegible/pseuds/Nillegible
Summary: When Shikadai is sixteen, Sarada stumbles back into Konoha with a broken and unconscious Mitsuki on her back, her Sharingan spinning with an unfamiliar pointed pinwheel instead of the usual rings. Boruto is pointedly, conspicuously, obviously, not with them.(A completely self-indulgent ShikaBoru story spanning from the moment it hits Shikadai that he's in love with his best friend to the eventual confession. And if anyone else can drop me a line if they know where to find more ShikaBoru, I will love you forever. Thanks!)





	Sixteen, Seventeen

**Author's Note:**

> As I said before, this is completely self-indulgent. I have 12K of random Boruto/Shikadai drabbles written out because I think that they're so cute together. I have not once been a Boruto/Mitsuki fan (why is it the more popular pairing?) but maybe next Thursday's episode will fix what I find weird about shipping those two together and I may be converted, we'll see.
> 
> Please be forewarned that this is not a careful, thoughtful story, I just had lots of fun writing it.

Shikadai is sixteen when Sarada stumbles back into Konoha with a broken and unconscious Mitsuki on her back, her Sharingan spinning with an unfamiliar pointed pinwheel. Boruto is pointedly, conspicuously, not with them.

Sarada drops from exhaustion the moment someone takes Mitsuki from her, and then no one can ask them, “Where’s Boruto?” as though the question even needed to be asked.

Sarada sleeps for three days, her newly awakened Mangekyou Sharingan having sapped all of her usual chakra reserves.

Orochimaru turns up on that same day with Log, and without a word assumes charge of his son’s care. The medinin are half terrified and half relieved; none of them could reverse (or even fully comprehend) the damage to Mitsuki’s body.

Sarada reports directly to the Hokage and the Hokage’s advisor, who come to see her in the hospital. Their mission is quickly upgraded, classified Top Secret. She isn’t allowed to speak of it again.

It takes Orochimaru a week to put Mitsuki to rights, and when he finally opens his yellow eyes it’s to find his parent asleep in a chair beside his bed. Perhaps at any other time, the demonstration of his parent’s affection may have been comforting. Mitsuki can barely see, it’s so dark.

This time, Naruto and Shikamaru cannot get a private audience with Mitsuki; Orochimaru refuses to leave while he recounts the events that had transpired on their mission. Both men are sworn to secrecy, and Mitsuki haltingly requests that he be temporarily suspended from active duty. It saves Naruto from having to convince him to take time off, so he accepts.

None of this, of course, matters. What matters is that Shikadai is sixteen when Boruto somehow meets a foe that he can’t overcome by sheer stubbornness and doesn’t come home.

They hold the funeral a week later.

Mitsuki doesn’t speak at all at the funeral, and Sarada only manages a few lines that convey that Boruto could have saved himself and left them to die, except he was _Uzumaki freaking Boruto_ , so of course he’d taken their place. Himawari speaks for the Uzumakis; she starts crying while she talks about her brother but bravely gets through her speech. The Hokage doesn’t even look _alive,_ sandwiched between Konohamaru Sensei and the Rokudaime.

Shikadai sits through the speeches, the flowers, the crying. He sits through the crowd slowly dispersing, as it sinks in that being here is pointless, it’s not like they could bring him back. He watches as Iruka-sensei and Dr. Haruno carefully lead the Hokage away, long after Hinata-san had been escorted by her father and sister.

He stays while the shadows stretch and stretch, swallowing up everything until everything is shadowed and so nothing is shadowed, no one left but himself and Mitsuki, who is looking up at the moon. A snake slithers up to him and tells him to come home. “Okay,” says Mitsuki quietly. Several minutes later, he stands up, gives the fresh grave a long look, then turns and walks away. Shikadai wonders if he’ll ever see him again. The snake slithers after him, silent in the grass.

Shikadai realizes that he’s exhausted, can’t lift himself to his feet and walk himself back home, so he just lies back where he is. It might be disrespectful to sleep in a cemetery, so he keeps his eyes stubbornly open, watching the sky.

He hears another person approach, hears them settle down beside him. He knows who it is without having to check.

“Mitsuki is deserting.”

“We’ve given him indefinite leave to visit Otogakure. If he ever wants to return, he can. Don’t worry.”

“Hokage-sama didn’t-”

“He just buried his own son, Shikadai.” There’s a waver in his father’s voice. Hoarse and scraped, just a bit shy of broken. His father had misunderstood what he meant to say. But he supposed it was as good an answer as any, for what he wanted to say.

 Shikadai says nothing. Perhaps feeling guilty for ending the conversation so thoroughly, his father says, “The clouds are beautiful, tonight.” They’re not, they’re rushing by like they have someplace else to be. Shikadai likes his clouds more placid, not hurrying across the sky. The stars blink in and out as the small dark shapes hurry over them.

Shikadai wants to sink into the grass here. Never have to move again. People can just step over him, he doesn’t think he’d mind much.

“Sarada blames herself,” he finally whispers, shutting his eyes. He doesn’t agree with her, of course.

“Uchiha curse,” his father says. “They always blame themselves.”

Shikadai snorts. He knows who’s really to blame, knows the unnamed enemy that his father has refused to speak to him about is the only one at fault. The person he _wants_ to blame is lying six feet under. Only, not even that, because Boruto’s body is somewhere in rice-country in a shallow grave, and only an empty coffin has been buried here, in his name.

“Shall we go? Your mother will be waiting.”

Shikadai tries to imagine standing up. Of leaving this place. Boruto’s not even _here_ , he tells himself firmly.

“Please?” asks his father. Shikadai forces himself to sit up, then takes his father’s hand when it’s offered and lets himself be pulled to his feet. He’s being stupid, he knows. Sarada who blamed herself was stronger. _Hima-chan,_ two years younger, was stronger. He searches deep for his own strength but he finds only just enough to follow his father as he leads the way out of the cemetery.

If Boruto had been lying here, Shikadai thinks, he might have been trying to crawl inside with him.

They walk straight through downtown and it’s late enough that it doesn’t matter, the shops are closed and they don’t meet anyone they know. The streetlight split their shadows unevenly; small dark ones that switch sides when they move from one streetlight to the next and larger, fainter shadows that sometimes merge with each other, sometimes splinter into two or three. He doesn’t look up when they cross the burger place, keeps his head down because no, he just can’t.

Shikadai is sixteen, walking past a closed burger shop that he’s been frequenting all his life when he finally admits to himself that his best friend, whose funeral he had just attended, was probably the love of his life.

The weeks after, he can’t decide who he hates more; the people who don’t seem to realize that Boruto mattered to him and expect him to move on (“He wasn’t your teammate,” says one clueless Chuunin and Chocho actually knocks the guy out. “He irritated me,” she had said, eyes flashing) or the ones who give him pitying looks because they had known, had known the depth of his feelings before he had even acknowledged them to himself. Fortunately, there seems to be an abundant supply of hatred within Shikadai that he can dole out to all comers with a healthy heaping left for himself as well as a pile for Boruto, for not coming back.

He finds himself visiting Boruto’s house, often. It wasn’t something he’d really done before; the Yamanakas’ and Akimichis’ houses were places he visited far more frequently. Now though, he drops by to chat with Himawari, ask about her day, and sometimes help her with dinner. Hinata-san had returned to active duty and luckily they’d given her a Genin team to train instead of letting her take the series of A-rank missions she’d requested. Shikadai thinks that that decision had been safer for everyone involved.

Once, when he stops by, Mitsuki is seated at the table. His hair has grown out, blue-white hair down past his shoulders and Shikadai wonders for a moment how long it could have been since he’d seen him last. “You here to stay?” he asks, crossing his arms. He doesn't approach the table.

“Yes.” There’s something different about Mitsuki, he looks like he’s shed his skin and found one that suits him better. He is at ease.

“You look fine,” and it is definitely an accusation. The other jounin tilts his head, something he’s come to read over the years as _I know something you don’t._ For obvious reasons, Shikadai hasn’t been on the receiving end of it before.

“It’s lovely to have you back, really, Mitsuki-Senpai,” says Himawari, and Shikadai unwinds and resolves to be polite. Himawari gives him an approving smile when she notices the effort he’s taking and starts to quiz him on his plans for his birthday the next week.

* * *

 

Shikadai is seventeen, has been for a couple of days, when a different Uchiha stalks to the gates with an injured person on his back.

This time it is Uchiha Sasuke, and the figure on his back is Uzumaki Boruto.

Unlike Mitsuki, Boruto isn’t bleeding all over the place. His injuries have been carefully bandaged, and they’re everywhere, little of him is left unhurt but he is still conscious. He gives Shikadai a careful wave from where he’s slung over Uchiha-san’s back. Shikadai follows them like Inojin’s mental imprinted duck all the way to the infirmary.

It takes several months for Boruto to recover fully. Until then he practices, trains with Kakashi sensei, and Gai-sensei, and Sasuke-sensei. He even spends a very secret two-week long training session with his dad that is quite memorable for Shikadai because both Inojin and his dad had teased him relentlessly about how he was a lost little duck without Boruto. When Shikadai was smirked at by _Mitsuki_ , who _wasn’t_ moping at Boruto’s absence, he gives up and takes a solo A-rank until Boruto and the Hokage resurface.

It’s wonderful having Boruto back. It feels _right_ in the way a kite-string feels taught against the wind when it is saved from a free fall. Without him, their class had been more than a little lost, fracturing and pulling apart, but now that he’s back, they’ve found their balance again.

As long as it takes for Boruto to return to light duty, it doesn’t take a year, so Shikadai is still seventeen when he ends up on a joint mission with Boruto to Kirigakure. It’s a diplomatic trip, and Boruto is both Naruto’s representative and one of the guests of honor. Five years after the attempted coup that Boruto, Sarada, and Mitsuki had helped put down, it seemed the Mizukage and his successor wanted to show them and Kiri that there was no further unrest. Shikadai, his father had explained to him, was there to pay attention and report back on the things that the other three might miss. They’d explain him away as Boruto’s bodyguard because he wasn’t fully healed yet.

Shikadai thinks his addition to the party was unnecessary; Chojuro-sama and Kagura seemed to have things well in hand; the public show of gratitude and friendship was merely to show off that the ties with Konoha were exceptionally strong, and would most likely last into the reigns of the next Hokage and Mizukage as well (since it appeared that either Sarada or Boruto would eventually get the hat). There seems to be a bit of discontent amongst the Mizukage’s five swordsmen (Petty jealousy, Shikadai determines and then ignores it) but Boruto uses his Mystical Powers Of Friendship to convert three of them, and Sarada scolds the last one into submission and then scolds Kagura a bit for good measure. And that was that resolved.

The awful thing was that Kagura was even more handsome than he’d been back when they were in school with his ruby pink eyes and perfect fall of brown hair, and he wouldn’t. Stop. Flirting.

With Shikadai, not Boruto because Shikadai had several plans for disposing of the future Mizukage quietly if he were to make a move on Boruto. But this was _the future Mizukage._ Shikadai couldn’t afford to offend him, not all of them would be as tolerant as Uncle Gaara, and he didn’t want to be on the wrong side of this one. He’s probably already on Shinki’s hit list, he needs to do something about that. Shikadai doesn’t even understand, because Kagura has this weird heart-eyed hero worship for Boruto, but keeps flirting with him instead. (Maybe future Mizukage just had good survival instincts.)

Oddly, the person most annoyed by this after Shikadai is Mitsuki; Boruto just has a good laugh and offers to bunk with Mitsuki or Sarada to give his bodyguard the night off for some _fun_ with exaggeratedly waggled eyebrows and hooded eyes so that everyone in the vicinity would know exactly what he meant. Subtlety was not something Boruto believed in. The more Kagura flirts and Boruto teases, the more stand-offish Shikadai reacts (why was he even here? His dad was probably having a good laugh at his expense back at the tower) and the more disappointed looks he receives from Mitsuki. The last part Shikadai doesn’t understand, _at all_ , and asking Sarada for help just gets him an annoyed, “Tsch,” after which she ignores him.

Suffice to say that when four of the six idiot swordsmen, (Shizuma, Hassaku, Buntan, and Ichirota), break out of prison and into Boruto’s room to kill him, Shikadai is quite relieved to find an acceptable outlet for his rage. By the time the Kiri guards and Kagura storm into the room it’s only to see the four intruders trembling on the floor in fear, thoroughly restrained, and a bemused Boruto sitting up in bed and staring at the mess Shikadai had made of the suite.

They’re joined shortly by Sarada “There’s one in my room too, she might need a medic, sorry,” and Mitsuki who just drags Kyoho into the room by a leg.

“Why did you _bring him here,_ Mitsuki?” Boruto says, a little high pitched.

“I thought it’d be easier to clean them up if they were in the same place,” he says.

Shikadai hears the exchange and contemplates getting a few more punches into Shizuma, just to make himself feel better, but Sarada notices and grabs his arm, “Down, boy.”

Shikadai lets out a wordless snarl and pushes his way out of the room.

So Shikadai was having a minor psychotic episode while on a mission to a neighboring country, he was sure that was perfectly normal. At least no one was actively dying. He finds himself at the training arena they’d visited during their school trip, and contents himself with watching the flickering lights and shadows on the pool floor. He should be getting back to bed. Annoying or not, Boruto’s safety was his responsibility during this trip, and he can’t bring himself to abandon his mission. He wanders back to their room just as the last of the strangers are clearing out. Sarada, Mitsuki, and Boruto are all sitting on Boruto’s bed and they stop talking to stare at him when he enters.

Shikadai ignores them and walks onto the balcony. With a few hand-seals, he creates a shadow clone that stalks back inside the room. He hears his own voice say, “Feel free to use my bed, I’m keeping watch until morning.” There’s the sound of the door opening and closing so his clone had decided to keep watch from the corridor. Shikadai scans the surroundings, occasionally pacing the length of the small balcony.

He paces until the sun rises when he stops to watch the gorgeous clouds and the water change colors before sunrise. It’s beautiful and loud; the city coming to life below him while the seabirds begin a riotous racket. It soothes the anger he’d been holding on to but leaves him with something else, still painful, twisted up inside. He wonders if he can let his shadow clone pretend to be him and just hide out here for the rest of the day.

Sarada joins him when the sun has just risen. Her eyes are spinning blood red, just like the gold edged clouds above the ocean. She looks up at him, the years have only served to increase their height difference, and frowns.

“Did you need something?”

“You are not the only one who thought he was dead, alright?” She lets her eyes flicker into that other shape, the Mangekyou Sharingan before it goes back to the usual Sharingan. She turns away from him to survey the scene below them. “It was supposed to be just you and Boruto, but Mitsuki and I asked to join because we’re too worried to let him out of our sights for long.”

“I can do my job,” he tells her stiffly. It’s a deliberate misunderstanding of what she said, hoping to evade her scrutiny, and she buys it; lets out a soft chuckle and says, “The guards are terrified of you, now. I suppose you did make Konoha appear stronger. Hokage-sama should be pleased.”

He stays quiet for the remainder of the trip, refusing to let Boruto or Mitsuki wind him up again. He’s also polite to Kagura, and when the other man asks if Shikadai would like to get dinner together the night before they leave, he says yes. Boruto would be dining with the Mizukage, it was harder to get better security than that.

It’s surprisingly fun; they get quite an array of seafood, and Shikadai makes Kagura laugh out loud when he uses chakra to enhance his knife to get the crab meat out from a particularly stubborn crab shell. The conversation starts with video games and shinobi duties but eventually they end up talking about Boruto. Shikadai learns what truly happened during the coup, as well as Boruto’s two other visits to Kiri and offers up stories in return, such as the graduation exam bell test and the one mission where Boruto had ended up befriending someone else’s spirit summons, and the ensuing chaos when the spirit animal had chosen to abandon its summoner to follow him home.

“I wanted to attend his funeral,” says Kagura looking down at his food. The atmosphere disperses like Boruto had used his Gale Palm technique to blow it away.

“It wasn’t much fun,” Shikadai says when the silence stretches on.

“One of the reasons I had Chojuro-sama invite him back was to see for myself that he’s okay,” he looks up at Shikadai and smiles, “Although I’m glad to have gotten to meet you properly!” The rest of the meal passes more quietly, and Shikadai only properly relaxes when he has Boruto in his sights again, back in their room.

Unfortunately, Boruto tenses up the moment he sees him. Shikadai is startled because he hadn't done anything to possibly deserve Boruto's sudden ire. "Switch beds with Mitsuki, tonight, I have to talk to him," says Boruto, and ducks into the bathroom to hide. He must have informed Mitsuki already because he enters the room while Shikadai is still grabbing some of his things. Mitsuki takes the time to watch him with his snake-like eyes, an expression of extreme disapproval on his face.

"I can't think of any reason why I deserve that," he says, finally sick of it.

"If you had any sense at all, you would have stayed away from Kagura," says Mitsuki, and gives him a slight push out the door and shuts it in his face. 

**Author's Note:**

> Please feel free to share your opinions, comments, criticism, anything at all. I look forward to every review, so if you can spare the time, I'd be grateful. And as I mentioned in the story summary, if anyone can direct me to more Boruto/Shikadai stories, I will forever and ever be in your debt, I really will.


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